


wretched alarms.

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Angst, Autistic!Daisy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Modern Era, Sensory Overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27648401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Uncle Felix sets alarms and Daisy can’t stand it.(Autistic!Daisy because I say so)
Relationships: Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	wretched alarms.

Uncle Felix sets alarms. He is the most forgetful man on the planet, so I suppose that it makes sense. There is one for every single action that makes up his morning routine — brush your teeth, make your lunch, sort your papers, don’t forget to drop your actual children (sort of) off at school — and with each one comes that noise.

The noise of his alarm is too loud and persistent beeps immediately followed by an identical sound a slightly lower volume which trails off to nothing before beginning the loop again. I don’t know what it is about repetitive noises but, much like the alarm bells at school, somebody repeating a question over and over, or the irritatingly persistent ticking of a classroom clock, but Uncle Felix’s alarm makes me want to tear my hair out.

Uncle Felix, being his usual irritating self, is somehow consistently unbothered by his alarms, and never rushes to turn them off when they start trilling out across the flat. Sometimes, he will hear his alarm, be reminded of the task that it denotes, and set about doing just that without turning the damn thing off.

Aunt Lucy is also irritated, but in that romantic way that means nothing at all. It drives Hazel to distraction but in a very neurotypical way: the persistence irritates her, but not to the degree of screaming to drown it out.

It is particularly terrible when I wake up to what I know is going to be a difficult day. Difficult days begin with refusing to eat toast, are marred with running from lessons and getting into fights, and end with furious screaming at Bertie to shut up and get off the phone — why must people  _ talk _ , why can’t they all love silence? — before finally having a vicious meltdown in the evening. However, these bad days are exacerbated by alarms.

I wake up to Hazel already in her uniform, drying her dripping hair and humming along to Alexander’s playlist for her. Every drop of water makes a noise as it breaks surface tension upon impact with the floor, her humming seems to stab through an invisible barrier of bearable sensation, and the hairdryer  _ roars _ .

Bertie is in the bathroom, the shower blasting in a way that hammers the drum of water inside my head. Unlike everybody else, I take a bath in the evenings because I cannot sleep if I feel dirty, nor can I stand going to school with slightly damp hair.

Aunt Lucy and Uncle Felix clattering around the kitchen, repetitive clinking and slight mechanical noises, the hiss of a drawer sliding shut.

I make a noise, a whimpering sort of groan, and press my pillow over my face. As she always does, Hazel notices. The hairdryer comes to a spluttering stop and she pauses her music in the middle of a line, and I hear — god, I can  _ hear _ — the rustle of her fumbling to brush the last of the droplets from her hair. “Daisy?” she whispers. “Are you having an overload?”

Although I don’t feel the sensation of nodding, I must do something because Hazel is beside me in an instant, helping me sit up and unfolding my weighted blanket from the end of my bed and draping it over both of our heads. It surrounds us and dims the light streaming through the window, and Hazel is  _ looking _ at me.

“It’s so loud,” I whisper, and even my own words grate at me. My grip on my pyjama trousers is painfully tight and my muscles are so tense that I could be a statue. When I move my head, my hair makes an odd, rough noise against the fabric of the blanket that hums inside my skull. “Hazel…”

“I’ll get your ear defenders,” she says, so quiet that it is a breath more than a sentence, and then she slips out from under the blanket and pads across the room, opening the door and beginning her hunt.

She leaves the door open.

I hear Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy laughing in the kitchen, the sounds of a knife scraping against toast and ice falling from the dispenser in the fridge door as they make up an iced coffee. Bertie has finished in the shower and is on the phone, laughing about the homework that he hasn’t done, doubtless while haphazardly doing up his tie and leaving his towels in a screwed-up pile on the floor. Bertie spends far too much time talking to people, and it makes me angry. Every syllable makes me feel furiously offset, a Matilda-ish heat building behind my eyes and tension in my chest, and even dragging my fingers over the sections of the weighted blanket makes not a bit of difference. It is as if I’m about to explode; all of these little irritations make me fizz and burn like something  _ has  _ to give or I will split in two.

Bertie laughs particularly loudly and everything is too hot to bear, and I  _ scream _ , tearing the blanket from my head, kicking it away furiously and covering my ears. “SHUT UP!”

Something falls in the kitchen. Bertie mumbles a hurried, “Sorry, love,” and ends the call that he’s on. Footsteps scramble to do everything quieter but that only makes it all worse, soft and creeping noises that are still so very  _ there _ , and I keep on shouting until my chest hurts just to make the pressure leave me alone. 

“SHUT UP, SHUT UP! I’M GOING TO KILL YOU, SHUT UP!” I shrill, beating my head with my fists as if it pushes the pressure out of me and into the air.

“Daisy!” Hazel gasps out, rushing back into the room with my ear defenders in hand. Her hair is awry and her uniform is a mess, and her eyes are enormously concerned. “Oh, Daisy, let me—”

I shake my head until it makes me feel motion sick, as terrible as Hazel gets in cars. “No, no, no, I don’t want anything.”

“You want quiet.”

“Quiet…” I groan. “Please.”

Carefully, she offers out my ear defenders. “Do you want me to put them on for you?”

I nod and she does so, delicately placing them over my ears. “There. Do you feel better?”

I shake my head. “I want to strangle Bertie,” I mumble, realising that my throat hurts.

In that moment, the wretched alarm starts, and I think that I’m going to die. 


End file.
